


Stellar novae

by lillaseptember



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: M/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Post-Season/Series 03, inconsequential rambling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-14
Updated: 2016-04-14
Packaged: 2018-06-02 06:09:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,347
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6554083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lillaseptember/pseuds/lillaseptember
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Stellar novae</i> - [Latin] New Star. </p><p>A phenomenon in a binary star system where a lower mass star gains mass from a higher mass star. If enough hydrogen from the higher mass star piles up on the lower mass star it can fuse into helium, due to the lower mass star's cruelly strong gravity. If the flow rate from the higher mass star is just right, the fusion will occur in one single colossal flash, making the lower mass star erupt in a huge explosive flare. These explosions can be extremely violent, and tens of thousand of times more brighter than the sun. A star that has previously been invisible can therefore flare into visibility for a short amount of time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stellar novae

**Author's Note:**

> **WILL GRAHAM**  
>  I wondered if our stars were the same.
> 
>  **HANNIBAL**  
>  I believe some of our stars will always be the same. 
> 
> \- [Dolce Script](http://livingdeadguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/H306-Dolce-121314.pdf)

He had never really been into stargazing.

He had spent countless of nights underneath only the quiet comfort of the starlight, watching the very soil he was sitting upon spinning slowly in the vast space of nothingness that was their perceptible universe. He had found comfort in the stars, in their collective solitude. But he had never really put thought behind his gazing. Had never truly studied the night sky.

That was a hobby he had only recently picked up.

He didn’t really care for the established constellations. He could point out Orion, and the Great Bear, and some few others that his father had taught him, but he much preferred making up his own. Connecting stars with invisible strings, discovering new patterns in the dark firmament, joining celestial objects millions of lightyears apart in order for them to become a part of his design. A stag, a paddle, a wineglass.

A dragon.

Will had thought he would never experience anything as unrelentingly cold as the Atlantic after their fall, the freezing ocean water not only seeping through his clothes, but through his skin, flesh, into the very marrow of his bones.

Bus as he buried his nose into the glass of his whiskey again, he started to waver in his conviction.

The entire world was minutely still around them, the sheer layer of snow covering the ground crisp and glimmering in the frozen starlight. Will’s breath bloomed out in a bitter mist in front of him, the tips of his ears burning from the cold, the tranquility of the universe surrounded them.

Stars, hundreds upon thousands upon millions, were shining brightly in the vast expanse above them. When he closed his eyes, he could imagine himself disappearing among them. Wrap himself up in the very gap between space and time.

And just a shy slimmer in between the scattered stars, the moon spun lazily on its own axis, round and round and round and round…

He had not offered an explanation of why he had thrown them both off the cliff, hurtling into the deep dark of the Atlantic. He had no intentions of ever doing so either. And he knew Hannibal was never going to ask.

Sometimes he longed back to the quiet serenity of the ocean. It had all been so simple in the cold dark. No light. No sound. No life. Just him and the water, nothing else existing in the entire universe, just him and the dark sea. He had been at peace with the thought of dying that night, of silently disappearing into the roiling Atlantic and never be found again. Of letting everything go and never looking back ever again.

He vaguely remembered Hannibal’s fist curling into the back of his shirt, stinging saltwater being coughed up on seashore gravel. But how they had somehow ended up in the small cabin tucked away in the middle of nowhere, he had no clue.

They barely spoke.

It was funny, really. Their entire relationship had had been built on conversations. But somewhere they had trespassed the need for words. After so much poking at each other’s skulls, melding of minds and fusing of psyches, they had become superfluous. Will knew what Hannibal was going to say before even he did, and Will’s words were as much Hannibal’s as they were his own.

Hannibal shifted somewhat in his nylon seat, grunting involuntarily as the movement strained the still healing scar tissue on his abdomen. Will’s eyes automatically turned to him, a phantom ache grazing over his own skin, an irrational wave of concern and sympathy gnawing at the back of his mind.

For as long as he had tried to fight it, orbiting around Hannibal and have Hannibal orbit him, was settling. It was finding peace, no matter how violent and brutal. It was coming _home_.

Those first couple of week had been a muddled haze of pain and analgesics, dreams and hallucinations, time and existence. And it was only recently that he had been able to start gathering up the diluted matter that had once been his being.

Hannibal, in one of their rare occurrences of exchanging words, had called the fall their rebirth. A second chance for them to grow into the men they had always been meant to be. Together.

But Will didn’t feel like a new man. He _wasn’t_ a new man, not really.

He had died in the fall. The Will Graham that everyone had known and some few had loved had indeed passed away that night. But what had been reborn from the ocean foam wasn’t a new man, but a new life cycle.

A new life.

They were still shuffling, pushing, and straining, trying to work out how they fit together in this new life they were slowly puzzling together for themselves. Both of their edges were jaded and rugged, and they still had a lot of broken remains from their previous life to pick up and inspect before they could truly settle.

Will truly didn’t know what he wanted to happen, what was going to happen, what could happen. He was drifting spaceless as his body slowly stitched itself together and as he tried to stitch himself back together.

And for all of their likeness, for all their blurring, for all of their bleeding into one another, he really didn’t know what Hannibal wanted to happen either. What he planned to happen, what he had already made sure _would_ happened. He seemed awfully content in their aimless drifting, floating in between the nothingness as the dust of their battle settled.

The dragon kill was still fresh in Will’s mind, and he could still recall every single, small, _glorious_ detail of it. The black glint of the blood in the moonlight, the way the dragon and Francis had finally become one joint being on the frozen ground, Hannibal’s frantic heartbeat, trembling fingers and stuttering breath…

It had taken a long time for him to truly see it, but Hannibal had long ago stripped bare in front of him. From the moment they had first crossed each other’s paths, they had been circling each other. And during all that time, Hannibal had been letting his walls slowly erode and crumble, leaving him weak and vulnerable, allowing Will to step in, to draw substance and energy from him, to nourish off of him.

He had once told him he didn’t share his appetite.

And it was still true.

The urge, the _desire_ , to kill the dragon, to feel slippery blood in between his fingers, to feel that quiet sense of power surging through his systems as pure and simple wrath washed over him, was an urge Hannibal had worked well over three years to get him to act on. But the distance had only slowed down the process, and Hannibal’s influence had eventually overcome him, the heat and intensity of it making Will explode in the violent blast that shattered everything he had held dear in his previous life, the dragon only getting caught in the blast wave.

And now they were tightly orbiting each other again. Every day he could feel himself changing, growing, evolving, his own matter not belonging to him but being entirely his still. Hannibal was seeping into every fiber of his being, nestling somewhere deep in the center of his every cell. There had always been this constant, unwavering, equilibrium between them. A fixed amount of energy always moving in between them. It was only a matter of how that energy was divided.

He knew now that it was inevitable, that the energy he unconsciously and unwittingly always drew from Hannibal would eventually grow sweltering enough for him to explode in yet another wild and blinding flash of snarling teeth and scratching claws. And he knew that he was going to enjoy every beautiful and reverential moment of it.

But as the cold seeped into his very core, simply the knowledge of Hannibal sitting just out of reach warming him from the marrow of his bones, he was content in their slow spinning.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so I think this needs a little explanation.
> 
> I _adore_ astronomy.
> 
> As in, if I were better at math, I would have loved to study it. But alas, I am not. Crash Course Astronomy has served as an excellent substitute for me to still indulge in this interest though, and this whole piece was born out of their episode about [Binary and multiple stars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIFiCLhJmig). The whole concept of a Stellar Novae, or a recurrent novae if we're being precise, reminded me so much of Will. And then I suddenly craved to write that post-s3 fic that I swore I'd never write.
> 
> This is such mess, but I just needed to get it out of my system.
> 
> I also reverted back to my old alternative rock roots for this piece, and listened to a lot of Snow Patrol, Death Cab For Cutie and Keane while writing this. You should all listen to _Black burning heart_ by the way. A great song.


End file.
